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Hyde Park Library Compettion is being organized by Archasm for architects, students, engineers, designers, artists and philosophers. It is an Idea based competition Single stage competition Team of maximum three ...

Architect's Block - Time to realize

'Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.' - Frank Lloyd Wright

Any Architect in his journey of design, plunges into a sea of no-where, where he gets philosophical, cultures obstinacy in design and creates a no-compromise scenario. This could be observed most commonly in two phases of his life, one - In the middle of his architecture schooling, when he gets a semi-stable hold on design, his views and opinions, and the other – A point from when he is invited to deliver lectures about Architecture and Design in schools across the country. Undoubtedly, this indicates his old-age, which proves to be in accordance with the phrase 'Architects are late bloomers.'
But, on the contrary, there are instances when he experiences a disorder similar to writers. It is nothing but an 'Architect's block' for the former and a 'Writer's block' for the latter.

The following gives you an insight of the differences with respect to Writers and Architects:

Writer's block

a condition of being unable to think of what to write and how to proceed with writing.

this could last for years together also. So, in such a situation, the writer takes a break and starts to write when he is blooming with flamboyant vocabulary and ideas.

Architect's block

a condition of being able to think of everything other than design, but still pretending to sketch, just with the insane hope of a flowering with new ideas. In today's tech world, the medium has shifted to CAD and repeated 'Zoom in & Zoom out' is the most commonly observed symptom.

this could occur during the 'butter paper' doodles, single line drawings or even on `the night before the submission/jury/crit. So, in such a situation, the Architect does not a take any break, but just continues to work and only work, as it is a matter of deadline and money sometimes.

Source: http://ink361.com/ Source: http://www.amscad.com/

Assuming an Architect works on 40 to 50 projects (average) in his lifetime, 2 to 3 years as the average time taken for every project, with at least 10 blocks during a project or approximately 1 to 2 blocks every month, an Architect on the whole experiences 'Architect's block' 400 to 500 times in his design life.

Source: http://ls2group.com/ Source: http://inhabitat.com/

He subtly ignores the above statistics and moves on to work on further projects every time, but with the same dedication. Or one could say, the more the number of blocks, the sooner the opportunity to lecture or give talks in architecture schools.
This calculation applies to every Architect, who has been or who is still or who will be in limelight at some point in future.

People of the same community somehow get to know about each other because of their like-mindedness. This community of Architects get defined by the design of the skylines of cities, where humans thrive and survive at the end of the day.

There are Architects who still believe in the power of hands rather ...

Author

Niveditha Ravikumar
Five years of Architecture was one hell of a ride! Back then, to call myself an ‘Architect’ was what I was prepared for. But, things froze, 'Design writing, research and criticism' caught my attention and kept me interested. My passion ...View full profile